Lots of winners in the chinese lottery. A 3 year life out of Li-ion batteries is pretty much par for the course - it's about all a laptop battery lasts & they make up the vast majority of 18650 batteries used.

Xplora wrote:A battery went cactus, guessing the dropping onto bike racks a couple times did it, but the other battery with the tail light has been a revelation.

Having pulled one of the aluminium & plastic battery packs apart (& put it back together), I suspect that one of the soldered wires has come loose - the soldering in mine was pretty ordinary, even by my standards. It is probably easily repairable, but would mean taking the rubber coating off - at $38 per can for plasticdip to recover the battery, it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Marty Moose wrote:Thats the old style battery hunt ebay for the rubber coated one or the one in the plastic box.

Actually Marty if you look at the reviews & discussions, you will see that while the pictures are of the old design, what is being shipped is the rubber coated battery. Same same inside.

Whilst there have been reports of dead batteries, I haven't heard of any reports of the more, ahem, attention grabbing, vents with flames - at least in the last 12 months, so it seems as if they have improved that aspect of their quality since Geoman's recall. Not to say it won't happen again of course, but for now, ok.

find_bruce wrote:Lots of winners in the chinese lottery. A 3 year life out of Li-ion batteries is pretty much par for the course - it's about all a laptop battery lasts & they make up the vast majority of 18650 batteries used.

Xplora wrote:A battery went cactus, guessing the dropping onto bike racks a couple times did it, but the other battery with the tail light has been a revelation.

Having pulled one of the aluminium & plastic battery packs apart (& put it back together), I suspect that one of the soldered wires has come loose - the soldering in mine was pretty ordinary, even by my standards. It is probably easily repairable, but would mean taking the rubber coating off - at $38 per can for plasticdip to recover the battery, it doesn't seem worth the effort.

Marty Moose wrote:Thats the old style battery hunt ebay for the rubber coated one or the one in the plastic box.

Actually Marty if you look at the reviews & discussions, you will see that while the pictures are of the old design, what is being shipped is the rubber coated battery. Same same inside.

Whilst there have been reports of dead batteries, I haven't heard of any reports of the more, ahem, attention grabbing, vents with flames - at least in the last 12 months, so it seems as if they have improved that aspect of their quality since Geoman's recall. Not to say it won't happen again of course, but for now, ok.

Very true, I ordered 2 and got the rubbercoated ones, this was 6 months ago.

My 808E wasn't dipped in rubber, it had a rubber cover with an extra piece over the back. Not a recent model though. I think it got dropped on the circuit that regulates the recharge protection etc to stop Lithium Ion explosion. So I easily got into it to have a look, but the soldering on the wires was OK - multimeter seemed to think the problem was the circuit, and I'm not that brave to attack that with the soldering iron

Xplora wrote:My 808E wasn't dipped in rubber, it had a rubber cover with an extra piece over the back. Not a recent model though. I think it got dropped on the circuit that regulates the recharge protection etc to stop Lithium Ion explosion. So I easily got into it to have a look, but the soldering on the wires was OK - multimeter seemed to think the problem was the circuit, and I'm not that brave to attack that with the soldering iron

You could replace the PCB - they are only $5 or so, but of course there is the distinct possibility that there is nothing wrong with the PCB - it is doing its job because the cells are out of spec. An interesting exercise is to check the voltage of each group of cells, ie from the common feed to + and from the common feed to -. On my pack this is a white wire, but ymmv

-----------"Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever" Lance Armstrong

a mate of mine lives in Laos and has this great expression "same - same, but different". This best describes the two batteries you have linked to. Inside they use the same cells, the same pcbs and have the same known issues with quality control, poor quality solder joints & in particular the low voltage cut-off value for the pcb. Any difference is entirely in the case.

The first is an aluminium & plastic shell. If assembled correctly, it is pretty much rain proof, can be taken apart to intall a balance wire, for repairs & when the cells die you can replace them & the PCB with high quality units. Downside is that it is a fraction heavier.

The second is rubber coated & provided there are no manufacturing defects, will also be pretty much rain proof. Is a fraction lighter, can be found a bit more readily and is a bit cheaper. Only downside is that any repairs etc will destroy the waterproof cover and replacing / repairing that is more expensive.

I have seen, but do not own, the tail light. From all accounts it is built to the same standards as the rest of their products, but it appears both functional & bright.

Well, strange problem this evening. My front light 808E is hard mounted to the front fork (looks a bit like a dynamo light actually lol), I hit a pothole pretty hard tonight and the light went out. Had a lot of trouble getting the switch to toggle on after I stopped, it was getting power but no light. Very worried the internals have broken away. Either way, quite concerning that the light couldn't handle the blow, I'll be quite annoyed if I can't get it back into the game over the weekend, because it's finally time to use the thing!

The circuitboard inside the light is soldered at the sides to provide stability. These solder joints had snapped, dislodging it and making switching harder. I redid that, added a third solder point, and booyah

Xplora wrote:The circuitboard inside the light is soldered at the sides to provide stability. These solder joints had snapped, dislodging it and making switching harder. I redid that, added a third solder point, and booyah

Front light has crapped itself again after a couple weekend rides I'm going to put in a Paypal dispute for the MagicShine front light as well, the rear has shown up, I'm worried that they aren't expecting any front lights and aren't bothering to advise. I wouldn't have ordered it unless the thing showed as "in stock" on the website and it's current reliability has been disappointing. I really MUST have something more reliable. Operation Dynamo is starting to come back into vogue

Xplora wrote:I really MUST have something more reliable. Operation Dynamo is starting to come back into vogue

On this topic I am totally blown away by how convenient and effective modern dynamo lights are after using my Vivente which has a Shimano XT dynamo hub and B&M Lumotec front light and B&M rear light.

Add this to my high powered Ay Ups and I have zero visibility issues at night.. the dynamo lights are a great set and forget option.. always running, never worry about batteries, don't notice any drag etc.. I'm a convert (well, almost, I still like to have my Ay Ups on the bike for extra light when night riding or around heavy traffic).

Pulled the light apart, tightened up the internal ring, working fine?! I get cranky when things COULD work OK but do not. I think I need an O-ring to absorb some of the bumps. Anyways... methinks loctite is in the future. Worried this thing is going to shake loose again in the future, I can't have lights going black at 45kmh

Xplora wrote:Pulled the light apart, tightened up the internal ring, working fine?! I get cranky when things COULD work OK but do not. I think I need an O-ring to absorb some of the bumps. Anyways... methinks loctite is in the future. Worried this thing is going to shake loose again in the future, I can't have lights going black at 45kmh

considering the price of other lights in the market, these lights are VERY cheap. But if you are able to do your own handy work it could pay off very well for you.

dynamo setup is not cheap, I looked into it once, but it was far cheaper to get ayups !!! Also I found it very hard to get enough information to know exactly what I needed to do and buy to install it before parting with cash .... if you can speak german, you might do better there though.

eeksll wrote:Also I found it very hard to get enough information to know exactly what I needed to do and buy to install it before parting with cash .... if you can speak german, you might do better there though.

As for the cost of setting up a dynamo light set, my bike is my transport. I considered what sort of money I'd be prepared to pay for the lighting system on my car. Then considered these lights are protecting my life. The costs reduced in significance quite a bit to me after this.

“The pain of poor quality lasts long after the joy of a cheap price”..... or to put it another way, the pain of a high price disappears quickly while you enjoy the value of high quality for a long time.

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